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If you are a Bitcoin enthusiast, you should use an Android smartphone. Bitcoin lovers with iPhones will tell you that Apple has consistently blocked Bitcoin apps that allow users to send and receive Bitcoin. Coinbase’s Wallet app got bumped from the Apple store days after its release. Another app for sending and receiving Bitcoin, Gliph, was only allowed in after it removed its most important feature: sending and receiving Bitcoin. For some odd reason, a wallet app from Blockchain managed to avoid getting bumped for years. With it, you could scan QR codes and easily send and receive Bitcoin via mobile. It snuck into the app store like an underage drinker at a bar, and Apple’s bouncers neglected to card it for two years. Members of the Bitcoin community would tell people to use the app but to keep quiet about it. But the bouncers got wind this week, and Apple kicked Blockchain to the curb.

Its users were so unhappy about it that a few of them destroyed their iPhones in dramatic fashion. In the montage above, via Reddit, you’ll see some Blockchain users go at their phones with a machete, a hammer, and a rifle. iOuch.

Blockchain, which is hating the block but loving the publicity, has been making the rounds with the press to capitalize on the Apple censorship, and spreading the conspiracy theory that Apple is blocking Bitcoin apps because it has its own iPayment in the works and fears the competition. I haven’t been able to get Apple to comment, but based on conversations I’ve had with companies in the past about their Bitcoin apps being pulled, I think the reason for Apple’s Bitcoin ban is a simpler one. Bitcoin is still in a murky legal zone in much of the world. Within the U.S., any company that enables Bitcoin sending and receiving is involved in the highly regulated money transmission business. There are lots of rules around money transmission because the feds want to prevent money laundering, like this. A company involved in sending money has to be licensed with the Department of Treasury’s financial crimes department FinCEN (which requires them to monitor their customers and transactions for anything suspicious) and, arguably, with every single state — a laborious and expensive process that many Bitcoin businesses haven’t completed yet.

Apple is notoriously conservative when it comes to their app store (Google “Apple store” and “porn”). Wary of the legal murkiness around Bitcoin, Apple appears to be taking the stance of banning any app involved in virtual currency money transmission. I bet if one of these companies sent Apple proof they were certified with FinCEN and every single state in the U.S. as a money transmission business, they could get their app approved, though there’s still the problem of Bitcoin’s legal murkiness in the rest of the world. Olympics-bound iPhone users for example probably shouldn’t be using it, as Russia frowns on Bitcoin for now.

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Bitcoins are a great idea. The app seems great, but imagine having an app on your phone that explains how to make Methamphetamine or a bomb. Which lands an individual on the FBI’s watch list, not a good idea. Also, considering how easily an iPhone can be traced back to the user, an anonymous currency app seems stupid.

40% of the world’s economy is supported by the black market. Trying to demonize is and keeping some people out is a great thing, thus leaving the visionaries with more time to work some extra hours and get in while still cheap.

Bitcoin right now is like email during the 14.4K internet modem days. The price of bitcoin doesn’t matter, its the protocol that gives it value.

TCP/IP is now a fact of life, and peer-to-peer currencies will also be a fact of life.

Another reason to move beyond the walled garden of Apple, and level up to a Droid. Having said that, I’d have expected nVidia to take payment for graphics cards in Bitcoin by now, given the number of graphics cards that are being snatched up for GPU Bitcoin mining.

Bitcoin is very revolutionary idea.It ensures instant payment in exchange of goods.But such transaction should be regulated through an government agency to curb money laundering.Now a days business are encouraging transaction through

one’s gadgets and possibility of misusing app can not be discounted.If apple has blocked such app,they may be having instructions from fenCEN